The Red Haired Bitch
by SkinIsACanvas
Summary: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Especially when that woman is married to Jackson Rippner. As their marriage and life falls apart over Jack's failure, Michaela Rippner enlists the one person she hates the most, Lisa Reisert, (or, as Michaela refers to her, the red haired bitch ) to pull everything back together again. But it might not work out the way she expects it to.


It was another night and Jackson had found himself at the bottom of a bottle once again. Make that three bottles. Beer cans and the memories of his sobriety lay in shambles on the floor along with the broken glass from the aftermaths of his drunken rage.

"Jackson, honey?" his wife, Michaela Rippner, asked cautiously with her head peeping around the corner to peer into the kitchen. A gasp escapes her lips, not at the disaster her poor kitchen is, but at her husband who was face down on the floor.

_He's done it, he's actually done it, finally done it, _the voice in her mind is surprisingly calm as it tells her this. _He's drunk himself to death._

As Michaela took careful steps forward, she cursed the red headed bitch who had caused this entire mess, the one who had cursed her and her husband with their entire situation. Thankfully, Jackson wasn't fired since it was rather simple to right the wrongs he had committed. However, Jackson had never really recovered from the mistakes he made and the lashing he got from the woman he had become smitten with within the eight weeks he had watched her from afar.

Michaela knelt down next to Jackson's still body, her dark hair covering his face. A gentle finger reached for his neck to makhe sure he was still breathing when all of a sudden, a hand shot out to grab her painfully tight around her wrist, crushing her bones in an iron grip.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, woman?" Jackson's voice was slurred as he pressed her forehead against his, twisting his body so he sat up with far more grace than an intoxicated person should be capable of. His breath was awful, like he hadn't brushed in years. To top it all off, he reeked like beer and an assortment of other types of alcohol.

Instead of pouring her heart out to him like she used to, telling him how much she loved him, how much she worried about him, how he needed to get better for him, for them, for her, she struggled and pulled at his grip. "Jackson, let go!" her voice screeched at him, volume being the most powerful weapon she had against a drunk and slightly hungover Jackson.

He flinched and let go of her while covering his ears to block out the reverbeations that resounded in his skull and acted as hammers, smashing along the inside of his head. "Don't fucking scream like that. Don't you think I've had enough of your screaming?" he asked, his voice gruff and accusing while he gave a pointed look to his wife who was not cowering in the corner but standing there, poised to run if this turned out to be one of Jackson's bad nights, the violent ones.

Jackson's fists closed and tightened, opened and looked almost welcoming. Over and over again they would go through the motions, as if deciding whether or not how to be, how to act. Michaela knew it was the outward expression of his inward war.. How to be.. How to live.. How to Move on... Like his hands, Jackson couldn't figure it out.

As usual, Jackson stalked out of the room, cursing at the woman in the corner, slamming the door to the bedroom and leaving Michaela to her own devices, the couch. In a flurry of the reddest rage known to her rather sheltered mind, she picks up a knife, grabbing it from the block on the counter. Her mind wanders to the room down the hall, to pressing the blade against his clammy skin and ripping it all away until he's nothing but a memory and a broken heart. But she doesnt. Because that's love and if love means pulling him out of this trench, then she's damn well going to do it.

Instead, she pulls back her arm, taking the tempting blade with her as she throws it with all her strength until it plunges into her kitchen walls with an audible ripping sound. It leaves her with a strange feeling, a tingling feeling in the bottom of her chest, right where her heart is. Her kitchen is already destroyed, torn apart by Jackson's whirlwind of red hot furies, but now she's left her own mark, her own scar as a clue of the destruction. It fills her with a renewed hope, a new determination, and a new idea to grab Jackson under the armpits and forcefully pull him out of the trench he's been diffing her himself.

Jackson was throwing things around things in their bedroom once again, anything he was capable of getting his hands on. Blankets, the clock, books... A deafening thud was heard throughout the home as the nightstand crashed against the wall. One of the piecesmust have broken and flung back at him as she heard Jackson swear to himself, cursing this, that, and the other thing like he usually did. His pride, so fragile and so broken, Jackson acted much like a snobby teenage girl.

"Bandaids are in the bathroom, cabinet on the left!" Michaela yelled to him boredly, knowing he wouldn't listen to her, just wanting to get on his nerves.

"Fuck you!" he yelled back through the walls and she could hear the embarrassment in his voice. With her renewed hope, she had to chuckle with the idea that this shit would all be over soon.

"Well if you came out here and fucked me, maybe you could fix this damn marriage!" her voice screamed back at him bitterly while she settled on the couch, formulating her new idea and sculpting her new plan.

If the red haired bitch was the one that got them into this mess, then maybe it would take the red haired bitch to get them out.


End file.
